Stockholm’s Gröna Lund has spent SEK 205 million on a laser-blaster dark ride, and the interesting part is not the lasers. It is how the vehicles will know where they are.
What happened
Gröna Lund announced Score! in June 2026 as an interactive, trackless dark ride for 2027, with the manufacturer to be named at IAAPA Expo Europe. That reveal came in London this month: the ride system is Vekoma’s new DRX platform (the company describes it as Dark Ride eXperience), and Score! will be the first attraction anywhere to use it.
Vekoma and the park describe the platform as using “radar-based positioning technology”, which Vekoma calls “the first of its kind within the attractions industry”. Jora Vision is the design partner, working with Gröna Lund’s creative director Jakob Fagerström. The story is an underground archive of forgotten park artefacts; riders carry laser blasters, hit targets and collect points.
The detail
| Score! | |
|---|---|
| Park | Gröna Lund, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Opening | 2027 |
| Ride system | Vekoma DRX, trackless, radar-based positioning |
| Vehicles | 8, each seating up to 6 |
| Footprint | about 700 m² (7,500 sq ft) |
| Site | Central park, between Twister and Katapulten |
| Investment | SEK 205 million (about US$19 million) |
The park’s release gives the eight vehicles and six seats per vehicle, so 48 riders can be inside the show at once. It does not give an hourly capacity, and neither do we. One trade report puts the budget at €18.2 million, which squares with the krona figure. A second trade report says the interactive targets come from Alterface; we have not seen that in the park’s own release, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.
What it actually means
Start with the “world’s first”, because it is narrower than it sounds. Trackless dark rides are not new: Tokyo Disneyland’s Pooh’s Hunny Hunt opened in 2000, and Efteling’s Symbolica runs on ETF’s system. What the press material claims as new is Vekoma’s own DRX platform, and the use of radar to position the vehicles. The first half is true by definition, since it is Vekoma’s product and this is its debut. The second is Vekoma’s claim, and we have not independently checked it against every system on the market.
So what does radar change? Conventional trackless vehicles, as we explained in our trackless primer, count wheel rotations and correct the drift against reference markers in the floor. Radar instead measures distances to the surroundings, the way a car’s parking sensors do. Vekoma has not published how DRX uses it, so what follows is our reading, not the company’s description. A vehicle that can locate itself against the room, rather than against tags laid in the floor, needs less installed infrastructure. It should also be easier to change: Dark Ride Database quotes Vekoma saying installations can be adapted over time with new stories and theming through reprogramming.
That matters commercially. A dark ride’s expensive, fixed thing is the building; the story is the thing parks want to refresh. Score! is set in an archive stuffed with props, and props are exactly what a sensor has to cope with. Radar reflecting off metal set dressing is the obvious reliability question, and it will only be answered by a season of operation.
The other point is Vekoma itself. The Dutch manufacturer is best known for coasters, including the Thrill Glider at Efteling and, lately, a patent fight with B&M over surf coasters, since dismissed. A dark-ride platform is a different discipline: software, show control and vehicle fleets rather than steel and gravity. It also shows how crowded the trackless field is becoming, with Intamin’s group having just bought Simworx out of administration. See our guide to the manufacturers for who owns what.
The Dispatch verdict
Score! is a modest-sized ride with an ambitious brain. Eight six-seat vehicles in about 700 m² is a compact show, and laser-blaster scoring is a well-worn format. The novelty is underneath, in a navigation method nobody has yet run for a public season. If it works, “no floor markers” and “reprogrammable” are real selling points to every park with a tired dark ride and a limited budget. If it doesn’t, you will hear about it from Stockholm first. Judge it in 2027, not on the press release.
Further reading: how trackless dark ride systems work, what Intamin’s Simworx purchase signals, a guide to the roller coaster manufacturers, and Vekoma’s other IAAPA reveal, Efteling’s Ravenring.